Are political considerations superseding scientific ones at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?When confronted with an obviously broken weather station that was reading way too hot, they replaced the faulty sensor — but refused to adjust the bad readings it had already taken. And when dealing with "the pause" in global surface temperatures that is in its 19th year, the agency threw away satellite-sensed sea-surface temperatures, substituting questionable data that showed no pause.The latest kerfuffle is local, not global, but happens to involve probably the most politically important weather station in the nation, the one at Washington's Reagan National Airport.I'll take credit for this one. I casually noticed that the monthly average temperatures at National were departing from their 1981-2010 averages a couple of degrees relative to those at Dulles — in the warm direction.Temperatures at National are almost always higher than those at Dulles, 19 miles away. That's because of the well-known urban warming effect, as well as an elevation difference of 300 feet. But the weather systems that determine monthly average temperature are, in general, far too large for there to be any significant difference in the departure from average at two stations as close together as Reagan and Dulles. Monthly data from recent decades bear this out — until, all at once, in January 2014 and every month thereafter, the departure from average at National was greater than that at Dulles.The average monthly difference for January 2014 through July 2015 is 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is huge when talking about things like record temperatures. For example, National's all-time record last May was only 0.2 degrees above the previous record.Earlier this month, I sent my findings to Jason Samenow, a terrific forecaster who runs the Washington Post's weather blog, Capital Weather Gang. He and his crew verified what I found and...

Shaun King, an author and writer who is one of the leading voices speaking out against police brutality on social media, has claimed he is mixed

A report now claims he is white, citing a police report that labels him as white and claiming his parents on his birth certificate are both white

King applied for and then accepted an Oprah scholarship to Morehouse College, which are only given to black men

He also called the vicious attack he suffered in high school a hate crime that was motivated by race

'Out of LOVE for my family, I've never gone public with my racial story because it's hurtful, scandalous, and it's MY STORY,' said King

King also said he is the victim of a 'white supremacist conspiracy'

A key figure in the Black Lives Matter movement who claimed he was the victim of a horrific hate crime in his youth as a result his race has been outed as white.Shaun King, an author and writer who is one of the leading voices speaking out against police brutality on social media, has claimed he is mixed. King has claimed in past interviews that his father is black and his mother is white, but his birth certificate lists his parents as both white.In addition, King's race is listed as white in the police report of the aforementioned attack that occurred while he was in high school.

King also applied for and then accepted an Oprah scholarship to Morehouse College, which are only given to black men.The 35-year-old responded to the controversy on Twitter by saying; 'Out of LOVE for my family, I've never gone public with my racial story because it's hurtful, scandalous, and it's MY STORY.'

With Tuesday’s revelation that Hillary Clinton’s private email account was run from a Denver loft apartment with its servers in a bathroom closet, the Democratic Party candidate for president is suddenly aflush with all sorts of toilet humor.Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh recounted how the former first lady “had Secret Service agents guarding a bathroom. She told us that Secret Service agents were guarding her server 24/7. You can smell the stench of this a mile away, folks. A Mile High away!”Limbaugh said Hillary herself is now “becoming bathroom humor,” with the jokes writing themselves, as he proffered numerous one-liners, including:Hillary’s dump of emails is so big, we need a plunger.Those who said Hillary didn’t give a crap about national security were dead wrong.Hillary on the server controversy: “I ain’t no ways turd!”Code name for her server wipe: Ty-D-Bol.Just wiping the server [is now] bathroom humor.Now that her server’s been found in a bathroom, when Hillary says she’s getting to the bottom of this, it takes on a whole new meaning.And you have to wonder, if the American people won’t take this standing up or sitting down.Given the latest news on Hillary’s server in a bathroom, her campaign’s now officially circling the drain.Reports are that Mrs. Clinton’s server was wiped multiple times a day, and a bidet was also used for good measure.When asked about Hillary’s email scandal, Bill Clinton candidly confessed: “Ain’t no way to polish this turd. … I have never seen Hillary so pi–ed off in my life before.”Limbaugh concluded: “I hate to ask … where she stuck the thumb drive.”Some WND readers are also getting in on the comedy, noting:“The server must have been stored next to the cabinet where she keeps her Depends [adult diapers].”“The security system which involved leaving several enormous floaters in the toilet to deter entry won’t pass muster with the FBI.”“A crappy situation, indeed.”“First, we kept hearing her server was in her house in Chappaqua. Now, it was kept in a bathroom closet in Denver. What is the straight poop?”“In a ‘bathroom closet’? Sounds like the ‘Plumbers’ were involved in this one as well.”“Oh weeee!!! Hillary and her servers are coming out of the closet.”

Donald Trump has a new target for his criticism of the nation's immigration policies - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.Zuckerberg is one of the leading tech executives who has called for a more open immigration policy. Specifically, he wants to make more H-1B visas available to tech employers so they can hire foreign skilled workers.Trump said he wants to require employers to pay H-1B workers much more money, which he said would discourage companies from hiring them and boost job prospects for Americans. He also wants to have tech jobs offered to unemployed Americans before they can be filled by workers with H-1B visas."This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg's personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities," Trump wrote in his immigration plan. Rubio is also seeking the Republican nomination for president.Related: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump agree on one big issueZuckerberg started a public interest group called Fwd.us to push for immigration and lobbying reform along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. Neither Facebook (FB, Tech30) nor Fwd.us had an immediate comment on Trump's criticism of Zuckerberg.Trump says that there are plenty of graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, to fill tech jobs. That means that employers don't need H-1B visas to...

As Qualcomm readies to cut thousands from its global workforce, what kind of job market will displaced employees find in San Diego if they want to stay here?The answer is not as clear as you might expect.Some experts say the job market is healthy. The countywide unemployment rate is just 5 percent. Local employers have added 38,500 jobs so far this year. Qualcomm lures top-tier engineers to San Diego from around the globe. There’s plenty of demand from the region’s defense, medical device and software outfits for technology talent with a Qualcomm pedigree, say experts.“If you have to lose a job, this is probably one of the best times for it to happen,” said Lynn Reaser, chief economist at Point Loma Nazarene University. “In technology, engineers are in demand, and they can find jobs in San Diego.”Other experts. however, say the region’s telecommunications and semiconductor sectors are not what they used to be in...

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a...

In a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on August 6, Senators from both parties accused the Obama Administration of putting its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) goals ahead of Malaysia’s modern-day slavery; however, this was just half of the equation. A coalition of national and international organizations in Asia has charged both Vietnam and Malaysia with “Modern Day Slavery” -- Vietnam for its “blood cashews” and Malaysia for its oil palm industry; both are engaged in state-sponsored human-trafficking and indentured servitude. However, they are being rewarded by the US State Department that pretends these countries have “demonstrated sufficient progress on human rights” despite the fact that both have repeatedly “come under fire for paltry efforts” to reduce human rights abuses.

In the blood cashew industry, political prisoners are forced to work seven hours a day for $3 a month, for as long as seven years -- often resulting in serious injuries and even blindness -- to produce cashews to export to the US and other countries, an industry that brings Vietnam $1.5 Billion (US) per year.

The State Department conducts foreign policy by supporting the Administration’s flavor of the month, and removes the names of favored countries from sanction lists based on their assurances, without hard evidence of “significant progress.” This brings to mind the idiom, “A leopard doesn’t change its spots.” The abusers simply change their actions from overt to covert while preventing outsiders from access to areas and...